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Optimize In-App Sharing To Get More Users For Your App

We’d all love to be the creators of the next Flappy Bird but for most developers, that kind explosive growth is improbable. Instead, developers must optimize marketing to get the most from a limited set of resources. Thanks to Tapstream’s new Deferred Deep Links, one area ripe with opportunity is in-app sharing. Here we’ll take a look at how you can use Tapstream’s new deferred deep links to drive user growth.

To be clear, what I mean by in-app sharing is the functionality that allows your users to share content from inside your application through social media, email, sms or any combination thereof.

With in-app sharing, there are likely two scenarios that play out. Either shared content resides on a parallel website (mobile website) or in-app. We’re considering the latter case. For sharing in-app content, deep-links enable users to open specific in-app screens. For example, tapping on an article link in a Twitter stream takes me to the same article in the app from which is was shared.

Where this user experience falls apart is if I don’t have the original app installed. In fact, the deep link in this case creates a negative user experience because if I decide to install the right app and run it, I’d have to search for the article I wanted. We’ve all been there. It’s frustrating.

Deferred deep links work by first attempting to send a user to their desired in-app location. However, if the app isn’t on a users device yet, Tapstream will automatically redirect them to their intended destination post-install (first-run modification). This improves the user-experience and enables app developers to promote in-app content over mobile-web. Basically, it turns in-app sharing into a user-acquisition tool.

Your app will fall into one of the following categories with respect to in-app sharing:

No Sharing Functionality – If your app doesn’t allow users to share content, deferred deep links give you the opportunity to build a new viral feature for your app while providing new users with a smooth on-boarding process.

Shares (mobile) Web Content – If your app has sharing enabled but you’d prefer to drive more users back into your app versus the web, deferred deep links offer a superb opportunity to optimize app virality and leverage sharing to drive new user growth. In some cases, you might want to send visitors to web content first then provide them with an easy way to download and view the same content in-app. Either way, deferred deep links have you covered.

Shares In-App Content With Deep Links – If you’re already using deep linking, DDL is a natural extension that provides new users with a much less frustrating first experience with your app.

At Tapstream we’ve been talking a lot about deferred deep linking lately, and with good reason! The movement between mobile web to in-app has been broken for a long time. Regular deep links came close to solving this problem but created another problem along the way….a broken experience for new users. DDL is the next natural evolution for deep linking and goes a long way towards creating seamless movement between the web and app.